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the Old City Walls. The ancient wall started from the Norman fortress on Tower Hill, and ran to Aldgate the "Old Gate." Through Bishopsgate the Bishop of London used to ride forth to hunt in his woods at Stepney. Between Aldgate and Bishopsgate the wall was protected by an open ditch, two hundred feet broad, whose name, Houndsditch, sufficiently indicates the unsavoury nature of its contents. Camomile1 Street and Wormwood Street remind us of the desolate strip of waste ground which lay immediately within the wall, and of the hardy herbs which covered it, or strove to force their rootlets between the stones of the grey rampart. In continuation of the street called Houndsditch, we find a street called London Wall. Here no ditch seems to have been needed, for the names of Finsbury, Moorfields, Moor Lane, and Moorgate Street, hand down the memory of the great Fen or Moor-an arrant fen," as Pennant quaintly calls it which protected the northern side of London. On this moor, just outside the wall, was the Artillery Ground,2 where the bowmen were wont to assemble to display their skill.

Where the fen terminated the wall needed more protection, and here accordingly we find the site of the Barbican, one of the gateway towers, which seems to have guarded Aldersgate, the chief entrance from the north. Considerable remains of the wall are still visible in Castle Street, as well as in the churchyard of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. Passing by Newgate we come to the Old Bailey, a

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name which is derived from the ballium or vallum, an open space between the line of the outer wall and the advanced gate of the city. The wall now turned southward, and ran along the crest of Ludgate Hill, its western face being protected by the Fleet, a small stream which flowed along the ditch of the city wall, which was here called the Fleet Ditch. The river Fleet also gave its name to the street which crossed it at right angles, and entered the city by Fleetgate, Floodgate, or Ludgate. A Norman fortress erected at the same time as the Tower of London stood at the angle formed by the wall and the Thames. A wharf which occupies the site, as well as one of the city wards, still retain the name of Castle Baynard, although every vestige of the fortress has long disappeared. Dowgate and Billingsgate were two of the passages through that part of the wall which protected the city from assailants coming from the riverside.

The small space within the walls of Old London was almost exactly of the same shape and the same area as Hyde Park. As the last syllable of its name indicates, London was originally a dun or Celtic hill-fortress, formed by Tower Hill, Cornhill, and Ludgate Hill, and effectually protected by the Thames on the south, the Fleet on the west, the great fen of Moorfields and Finsbury on the north, and afterwards by the Houndsditch and the Tower on the east.

For a long period London was confined within the limit of its walls. In the reign of Edward I. Charing was a country village lying midway

between the two cities of London and Westminster, and St. Martin's in the Fields long continued to be the village church. Along the Strand of the river hardly a house had been built in the time of Edward III., and no continuous street existed till the reign of Elizabeth. Even then, to the north of this straggling line of houses, the open country extended from Lincoln's Inn Fields to the village church of St. Giles' in the Fields. James I. ordered the justices to commit to prison any person presuming to build upon this open space. Long Acre, formerly a field called "The Elms," or the "Seven Acres," was not built upon till the reign of Charles I. And scarcely a century ago a man with a telescope used to station himself in Leicester Fields-now Leicester Square-and offer to the passers-by, at the charge of one halfpenny, a peep at the heads of the Scotch rebels which garnished the spikes on Temple Bar.

If, two or three centuries ago, what now forms the heart of London was unbuilt upon, it was at a still more recent period that Kensington, Brompton, Paddington, Dalston, Stoke Newington, and Islington, remained detached country villages, though they are now districts incorporated with the wilderness of streets. There was a coach which took three hours to run, or rather to flounder through the ruts, from the village of Paddington to London; and Lord Hervey, in country retirement at Kensington, laments that the impassable roads should. cause his entire isolation from his friends in London.

The names Spitalfields, Bethnal Green, Field

Lane, Clerkenwell Green, Paddington Green, Vine Street, Moorfields, Smithfield, Coldbath Fields, St. George's Fields, Spa Fields, Rosemary Lane, Copenhagen Fields, and Kingsland, indicate the rural character of the districts that separated the outlying villages from the neighbouring city. In these fields the citizens could take pleasant country walks with their wives, while their children clambered over Goodman's Style, in Goodman's Fields, to drink fresh milk from Farmer Goodman's cows, or, on rare occasions, went nutting on Notting Hill. In Windmill Street, Finsbury, there was a windmill built on the top of a large mound composed of bones and earth which had been carted from the churchyard of old St. Paul's; there was another windmill in Windmill Street, at the top of the Haymarket; and there was a water-mill in Milford Lane, Strand. In Tothill Fields there was a bear garden; and the hounds of the Lord Mayor's pack were kennelled at Doghouse-Bar, in the City Road. In the fields by the side of the brook which has given its name to Brook Street, an annual fair was held on the site of Curzon Street and Hertford Street-a rural fête whose memory is preserved in the name of the fashionable region of Mayfair.

The names of the present streets will enable us to trace the courses of the brooks which ran through these country fields. The little stream called the Holborn, rising near Holborn Bars, gave its name to the street down which it flowed; and after turning the mill at Turnbull or Turnmill Street, it joined the Fleet river at Holborn Bridge. From

this point to the Thames the Fleet was navigable, at all events by barges, as is attested by the names of Seacoal Lane and Newcastle Lane.8

Finsbury and Moorfields were drained by the Walbrook, which passed through the wall in its course to the Thames. At Budge Row-a corruption of Bridge Row-there was a bridge over this brook. Two or three centuries ago, the stream was vaulted over, and Walbrook Street was built upon the ground thus gained. The Langbourne, another of the city streams, has given its name to one of the London wards; and Sherbourne Lane, near London Bridge, marks the course of the Sherbourne. Further to the west, the position of two small rivulets which crossed the Strand are denoted by Ivybridge Lane and Strand-bridge Lane.

The Tyburn, a much larger stream, after passing by the church of St. Mary le bourne, or Marylebone, and crossing the great western road near Stratford Place, passed across Brook Street, and down Engine Street, to the depression of Piccadilly. The hollow in the Green Park is, in fact, the valley of the Tyburn, and the ornamental water in front of Buckingham Palace was the marsh in which it stagnated before its junction with the Thames.

To the west of the Holborn and the Tyburn we find the Westbourne, with its affluent, the Kilburn. Where this stream crossed the great western road, it spread out into a shallow Bay-water, where cattle might drink at the wayside. On the formation of Hyde Park a dam was constructed across the valley of the Westbourne, so as to head up the water,

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